The Arena of The Duchy of Australasia. Mesoamerican Ruins.
In front of a lake of acid, a Crusader was pacing with footsteps intentionally made heavy to convey the situation’s gravity.
Justinian swung his zweihander in a knightly arc. “Byzantium! Lurking somewhere in this battlefield is our enemy, the Tizcan Host. I'm sure you all know of the misdeeds that they've committed in the name of malevolent foreign Gods.”
Their opponents were a Neutral Evil Village who roleplayed as the Thousand Sons space marines from the Warhammer 40k universe.
“We Byzantines have been asked to engage them in a Village Death Brawl, a life-and-death struggle, a perilous, hazardous, high-risk conflict from which one group alone may walk out alive. As your leader, I have accepted their offer in spite of the risks.
"My motivations are twofold. Firstly, it…” Justinian struggled to think of a roleplay-congruent way to frame his explanation. Since they’d be doing dungeons with Walker and the non-PVP Byzantines after this, their lost levels and gear could be recouped. “...the first is...that we, soldiers of good, must not cower from evil. It is our duty to hunt down the wicked and expose them so that they may be incinerated in the purifying light of the Lord. Should we ignore them, then they will grow in the shadows like mould in the castle walls until they are…
He gazed in the approximate direction of His palace. “...unstoppable.”
The speech was weak, but he couldn't help it; roleplaying for 9 hours would make anyone exhausted.
In the background, amongst the Byzantines, a brooding figure with luscious blonde locks was plucking a bowstring. It was taking every ounce of his willpower to resist loading up an arrow and lodging it in Justinian’s fucking temple.
This was Lightning Legolas, a Bowman, the leader of Byzantium’s Team Green, and the person Henry’d accused of treachery.
The Bowman cleared his throat. “Based on the map split and my analysis of the Tizcan’s prior battles, they’ll establish a defensive arrangement around Dragon Skeleton. To counter this, we should hopscotch to them via Hamlet and place our mages in the mead hall. That’ll provide us with a favourable position for exchanging spells.”
The battlegrounds, arranged in a 3x3 formation, shared their borders and had interconnecting routes that allowed duellists to pass from one to the next. Larger-scale battles than the 1v1 used multiple battlegrounds simultaneously - the official 6v6 format utilised a 2x2 square, a Village Death Brawl the full 9.
Justinian slashed his zweihander through the air, splitting Lightning Legolas's suggestion in two. “A knight’s vows forbid him from engaging in the tactics of warlocks. No, we will become a hammer of God, we will smash the serpent's head. Its tail, deprived of its evil command, can then be slain with ease. We rush their leader!”
The Byzantines cheered.
“That’s suicide against their formation,” said Lightning Legolas. “I want it noted, as leader of Team Green, that I officially do not support a rush.”
Justinian, detecting resistance from his co-leader, turned to Byzantium’s newest team to break the impasse. “What say you, Team Friendship Forever?”
Lightning Legolas glared at the ridiculously-named team, especially their Earthfriend, the brazen newcomer who’d stolen Battered Daisy and accused him of plotting.
Why was he wearing sunglasses?
“First,” replied Henry. “What’s their team comp?”
Justinian rubbed his heroic chin. “I am not privy to this information.”
Lightning Legolas sighed. Was Justinian privy to any information? Whelp, this was another opportunity to demonstrate his worth.
“The Tizcan Host have three 6-man squads as well,” said the Bowman. “They favour nuke-based strategies, with each squad being led by an Arcanist. Squad 1 contains a Fauna Earthfriend, Bowman, Cutthroat, Beneficence Crusader, and Miracleworker. Squad 2 - a Fighter, Grizzly Bear Beast Tamer, Cutthroat, Lightning Shaman, and Flora Earthfriend. Squad 3 - a Paladin Crusader, Fighter, Cutthroat, Water Shaman, and Flora-Celestial Earthfriend.”
Finishing up, he folded his arms across his chest with self-satisfaction.
Henry clicked his tongue. “It’s kind of strange that you could list that so quickly off the dome."
Lightning Legolas returned a look of contempt. “This is the minimum to be a competent commander. 'By knowing yourself and your enemy, you will not face danger in a hundred battles.'”
“'To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.'"
"What are you implying?"
"Hisssssssssssss...”
“HENRY, don’t make snake noises at Lightning Legolas!”
“....sssssss. Justinian, a rush sounds splendid. Let’s go, Byzantium! Woo, rushing, yeah, fun!”
Anything more complicated, they would definitely botch.
Justinian twirled his zweihander in approval. “You've absorbed the core message of today’s lesson: aggression! 5 Slum Points for Sir Henry! A rush, it is! Byzantium, prepare up by The Catacombs! Tanks to the front!”
At his orders, they moved across the rope bridges over the acid lake to The Catacombs, a battleground in the centre of the 3x3 arrangement with connections to all the others.
Its exterior was a grass-matted hill, down the slopes of which trickled a stream of blood from a chaotic 50v50 taking place above. The Byzantines stopped before one of several stone entranceways cut into the base of the hill; from it reverberated the screams of players being brutalised within a dim and dingy maze-like interior.
While the squads were being arranged, Lightning Legolas laughed with condescension at the silliness of the rude newcomer, who'd turned out to be as idiotic as the Crusader.
If these fools wanted to get themselves killed, then he wouldn’t stop them.
In fact, he might even help them along.
‘We’re rushing via Catacombs,” he messaged someone.
Shortly thereafter, the enemy commander replied.
-Xarax Throtep: You insult my intellect, betrayer. No assistance is needed to crush the dull-witted maggots of The Golden Crusader.
Lightning Legolas smirked.
Indeed, the rude newcomer’s suspicions hadn’t been incorrect.
However, it was still unfair to label him a betrayer or a snake, for he was the one who'd been betrayed first.
He’d enrolled in Byzantium’s arena team after learning of Justinian’s achievements in the 1v1, reasoning that someone so accomplished must have valuable lessons to impart.
Not true.
The more Lightning Legolas had played according to the Crusader’s trash advice, the more he’d felt his performance degrading. It wasn't him alone; he'd witnessed the same deterioration of his fellow Villagers.
Through Justinian’s incompetent management, Byzantium had become a Slum-wide joke. Everywhere they went, they were greeted with stifled laughs.
To escape this torment, this intolerable humiliation, the Crusader had to go.
Thus, Lightning Legolas, for the well-being of all, had begun a quest to undermine the Village’s trust in him.
During today’s training session, after the rearrangement of the teams, he’d insisted on pairing his Team Green with Justinian’s Team Blue and destroying them over and over again by implementing basic counters to the rush strategy that Justinian always employed - always. Throughout Team Blue’s repeated losses, Legolas could detect their doubts beginning to ferment.
For today’s last match, the whole Village team would suffer a catastrophic defeat under the Crusader’s misguidance. As they were stripped of their equipment and their levels, they would also be stripped of the delusion that Justinian was anything but a moron.
A vote of no confidence would be held shortly after that to demote the Crusader. Then, he would be replaced by someone else who knew what the fuck they were doing.
That someone would be Lightning Legolas.
Justinian, receiving the go-ahead from the Tizcan commander, stabbed his sword through The Catacombs entranceway. “Into the darkness, we venture! May God’s light illuminate our path!”
And thus, blind to the snake amongst them, the Byzantines dove into winding passages with walls graffitied by Village slogans and declarations of love.
They passed burial chambers where skull piles and coffins were lit up by the rainbow glow of clashing spells.
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Throughout their march, they maintained a rigorous single-file formation, hugging the left side of the passage - not for a strategic purpose; it was a Slum custom that’d developed to prevent congestion due to over-crowding.
Finally they came to a fork in the path, one of whose prongs would take them to Dragon Skeleton.
Justinian uttered a prayer. His followers hyped themselves up for the kamikaze charge.
Suddenly, Team Friendship Forever broke formation and sprinted down the other prong.
-Henry Flower: The Lord has granted me a divine vision of a serpent crushed wafer-thin between a hammer and a second hammer! What is better than one rush? Two rushes! Wait for a bit; we need to set up the swing.
Justinian craned his neck, gazing up at the imitation-stone ceiling, and shook his head in disbelief.
Multiple hammers...how had he never thought of this excuse? That would have prevented so many losses...
Lightning Legolas, hoping to get Team Friendship Forever eliminated, informed the enemy which exit they were taking. A moment later, though, their health bars in the group interface fell only an insignificant amount from a few arrow hits. With the abruptness of their departure, the enemy could not complete their more lethal spells before TFF found cover behind a building.
A strange idea echoed in Legolas's mind.
Had they predicted he'd give away their movements?
He dismissed this notion as being implausibly insane.
-Justinian: How fares your condition?
-Henry Flower: We're fine. 1&3 ribcage, 2 chest. 1&3 – Backline, top of rib cage; frontline guarding tail.
Lightning Legolas received a nudge from a team member.
“You guessed it, mate!”
The Bowman smiled smugly.
Of course he had. The enemy’s strategy was designed by him, tailor-made from his firsthand experience suffering under Justinian’s innumerable flaws.
Legolas flinched.
-Xarax Throtep: Lobotomised rodent! Why didn’t you warn me that Battered Daisy was with them?
18-17.
‘What’s wrong?’
-Xarax Throtep: She unstealthed our scout!
-cathysong31: Cutthroat down, smitten by love and friendship!
Legolas sneered at the pompous enemy commander.
The buffoon was trying to cast the blame for his own stupidity on him. In what way was it his fault? Daisy would have been on his team if the rude newcomer hadn't stolen her.
This was one of the glaring issues with Justinian's command. Being too lax with group assignment, he allowed players to choose whom they grouped with willy-nilly, leading to the best members being spread out around multiple mediocre squads. Similarly, in official 6v6 matches, he rotated in members regardless of their skill in order to give everyone a chance to play. These were the habits of someone too soft to guide a team to the top; a real commander needed to be callous, needed to favour the stars and shun the pathetic weak.
-Justinian: Sir Henry, what is the delay?
-Kittykat39: Let us at ‘em!
The Byzantines were growing restless. Usually, the outcome of their matches would have been decided by now.
-Henry Flower: One second.
Exactly a second passed.
-Henry Flower: GO!
Before Lightning Legolas could snitch, the Byzantines—their attention honed over thousands of battles to rush at the drop of a feather—sprinted out from the Catacombs into the open.
“Lord,” they cried in unison, heroically charging down a grassy-slope, “guide our blades!”
They were all wielding swords.
An enemy Fighter, wearing a Mithril outfit designed to resemble Space Marine power armour, raised an imitation power sword. “All is dust!”
This Fighter and the other Tizcan frontliners from two squads were positioned at the base of a dragon skeleton’s bony tail. Their duty was to prevent anyone from climbing up the tail onto the dragon’s spine, where their vulnerable backliners stood.
Amongst the backliners, the Tizcan Host leader, Xarax Throtep, and another Arcanist were summoning
22 metres south-east of the dragon skeleton was a giant treasure chest. There, a lone third squad were prepping spells to strike the Byzantines from the side.
6 seconds - how long before the Byzantines went boom.
10 seconds – how long they needed to reach Xarax, assuming the Tizcan frontliners completely failed to impede the advance.
Simple math said they lost.
As soon as the Byzantines had emerged, Lightning Legolas had ordered their two Cutthroats aside from Battered Daisy to use
As the area was shrouded in black mist, the Byzantine mages, memorising the location of the enemies, had hidden within the dark depths and prepared spells to be fired off when
This was a standard method at Tier-0 for mitigating The Defender’s Advantage.
Lightning Legolas, meanwhile, had crouched behind a wooden sign and immediately burned his
With his slow-mo view, he noticed the eyes of Xarax Throtep shifting between the rushing Byzantines and a spot in the Hamlet battleground to the south. There, a third
Team Friendship Forever must’ve decided to copy Lightning Legolas’s strategy.
The Bowman sneered.
These fools! Because the Tizcan Host had begun seconds earlier, because they’d established proper defensive positions, they could retreat after the opening volley to evade any retaliation attempt, rendering the
Why, then, had he ordered the Cutthroats to use them? To deprive the Crusader of their protection!
The frontliners, exposed in the open, would be blown up one by one!
Suddenly, a fourth
Lightning Legolas, from his side angle, though, could view it all.
Battered Daisy emerged from the black mist behind the isolated squad’s spellcasters, a spear readied to poke holes in them.
4
He snapped back to the third smoke, where a Cutthroat from neither Village was being thrown out by the Crusader they’d been ambushing.
Team Friendship Forever had planned for that?
Impossible...
The isolated Tizcan squad’s spellcasters cancelled their spells. Panicking, they fled towards their tanks—a Fighter and Grizzly Bear companion of their Beast Tamer—who were simultaneously running towards them to intercept Battered Daisy.
In that instant, two figures dashed out from a behind a barn at the northernmost edge of Hamlet, barely 11 metres south of the treasure chest. A Fighter whose very running form was handsome lead the way, while a tower shield with legs followed.
Lightning Legolas, feeling whiplash from twisting his neck back and forth, frowned.
Why would the rude newcomer face his shield towards the Byzantines instead of the enemy?
Lightning Legolas’s eyes tightened unconsciously at the pain of an irritating high-pitched squeal, before widening in alarm.
The rude newcomer, reaching his free arm back to wind up a throw, revealed at the maximum extension a vibrating drum that’d been hidden behind the shield.
Henry laughed. If his teammates were too garbage to aim or time their spells, then he would just have to do it himself.
-Henry Flower: Dan, scram!
When the handsome brute side-stepped, an opening was created through which Henry sent the vibrating drum soaring.
It sailed right over the heads of the enemies, who'd inadvertently clumped up to deal with Abigail's ambush.
Amongst the Tizcan Host about to be struck, the sole member to notice the flying drum was a quick-witted Earthfriend.
Knowing she couldn't overcome the inertia of her current movement, she tossed a
Boom!
The drum being aimed perfectly, five of her squad members were caught in its blast.
The last escaped only because he was the Cutthroat that had already died.
Ahead of her, a stunned Beast Tamer was watching the overly-handsome Fighter running at him to cut him down, while the Earthfriend to their rear transformed into a Silverback.
His heart trembled with bitter anger.
If the Byzantines were going to start doing set plays, could they not have debuted them against someone else?
The duo slipped past him.
Oh? Were they targeting someone else?
A sword thrust into his back, and, the ne—
Oh no, it seems you’ve died!
You have dropped Perfect Mithrilwood Shortbow.
Please choose a Reincarnation Monument to transfer your soul to. If no choice is made within 30 seconds, the nearest will be selected.
16-18.
The Beast Tamer became a cloud of soul-lights, being merged with a second cloud from his Grizzly Bear companion that’d disintegrated along with him. Floating above, he saw Battered Daisy carving a ‘Z’ in his team's Fighter's armoured belly - the weapon phased through armour when combined with the Cutthroat Basic Attack
The Fighter disintegrated shortly after when the Byzantine Silverback rattled their skull with a fist.
15-18.
Wait a minute...
The observing Beast Tamer realised that the gorilla punch had contained power reserved from the same
And then, even more astonishingly, the Silverback, never slowing down, having still not spent all the cycle's power, gave a third skulltap to the team's Arcanist, lowering his health to a point that would be fatal when the handsome Fighter's attack refreshed.
18-15.
In a single 3-second cycle, Henry and his team had eliminated two more noobs.
A fun quirk of Saana’s combat system was that it was balanced around the fact that attacks rarely hit with their full potential.
The 0.2-second attack preparation time for most Basic Attacks, during which a visual effect telegraphed an attack’s arrival, gave plenty of breathing room for a response. One could dodge, activate
Also, because most players had enough Strength to enclose their vulnerable body areas in near-impenetrable metal, the bulk of attacks were inflicted against less protected extremities that didn't consume as much HP to repair.
If, however, one could land a critical blow, say by pulverising a brain or ripping out a heart, then it only took roughly 1.3 attacks to kill a person - depending on the attacker's Strength and the victim's Vitality.
Theoretically, a squad had the damage output to destroy another in a single 3-second damage cycle. His friends were too trash for that, but—with
Lightning Legolas, witnessing the annihilation, felt a wave of nausea as he watched his scheme spinning towards the drain of the toilet bowl.
Justinian: Sir Legolas,
It wasn't over!
The Byzantine frontliners were about to facetank a spell volley. If they were eliminated, the Byzantine backline would instinctually charge and get themselves killed, too.
Lightning Legolas looked at the top of the dragon’s rib-cage, where the Tizcan Earthfriend was finishing adding a third Elemental Charge to their
As a Bowman, it was Legolas's primary responsibility to interrupt such critical Spellcasts.
With so little time remaining, he raised his bow and activated
At the tip of his arrow, a mysterious grey energy condensed. Behind him materialised a ghostly projection of a stoop-backed, grey-haired man.
On close inspection, the projection was Lightning Legolas’s avatar but aged an untold number of years. This tied into the fact that the Bowman class derived its spells from time magic, the progenitor God having stumbled upon the secrets of the domain after a life of studying the flight of arrows through space.
The aged projection covered its mouth -
As long as Lightning Legolas's arrow struck anywhere on the Earthfriend’s body or armour, their spell would be cancelled and they'd be silenced for 3 additional seconds.
Lining up his shot carefully, he let it fly.
The arrow arced out, its shaft twisting with gentle oscillations, then whizzed past the Earthfriend’s ear.
-Lightning Legolas: He dodged it!
Now the unfortunate target of the
And shortly after the fall of the dumb Crusader, the other Byzantines would collapse, too, and along with them, ultimately, Justinian’s unjust reign!
While the Bowman was basking in these delusions, he missed the flight of a second arrow coming from the south.